From selling popsicles to creating a Silicon Valley canteen Zerocater founder of the attack

Five years ago, in order to start a business, I came to the Bay of California alone, in addition to the heart has been very confident belief, and saw some Luo http://www.aliyun.com/zixun/aggregation/9797.html "> Graham (Paulgraham, Silicon Valley startup godfather) has written a pioneering article that I have not received much education about. For me, the goal has a very magical power, I always feel that only with clear goals, I can do any incredible things.

Many people will say that entrepreneurship is risky, but for me, it is the worst thing to do one job a lifetime. So entrepreneurship seems to me to be the least risky thing. I think that many people say that the "crazy" entrepreneurs, in fact, is a kind of personality characteristics that do not take the usual road.

To save money, I sold my car and went to the Bay Area by bus. I spent two days looking for a place to stay at Berkeley's public library. Rented a cheap studio from a retired dentist. Then start looking for help while starting a business.

It turns out that a 21-year-old who has no diploma or experience is hard to find a job. It was the worst summer of my ten years. Every day I knock on the door of my company to find a job, and I get a vague answer. After one weeks, find a job that is Ben&jerry ' s, an ice cream company.

A few days later, I saw a vacancy in the Justin.tv company online. I remember that the founder had sold his last company to ebay, so I excitedly emailed them for a job and soon got an interview.

I took the train and I was wondering how I was going to stand out from many applicants. In the interview, I took my little Ben, they said I was very serious note, the performance of very serious. And I told them very seriously that after a year of work I would quit my job to start a business.

After nearly three interviews, the applicant left 6 from the original 16 people. At the end of the third interview, Justin Kan asked about the salary I wanted, and I said, "Enough basic life, and I just want to learn from that experience." "That night, I was informed. The other person said, "We want to recruit employees who can work for us for more than a year." Your situation is very special and we would like to offer you another position.

My job is to deal with all the fine bits of work, test new websites, screen job resumes, and even order meals for the team. The work is trivial, but I think it's a particularly good thing to work there, and I'm lucky to have a bunch of good people working together, learning how to run a startup, and I've met a friend who helped me when I started my business "(Justin.tv's two founders later became Zerocater Investors and advisers).

One of the best things about working in such an entrepreneurial circle is that everyone's passion for entrepreneurship is unbelievable, everyone inspires each other, supports each other, and there seems to be a link between everyone. Although each experience is slightly different, everyone can understand the struggle and struggle.

After Justin.tv 1.5, I still did not find entrepreneurial ideas, so I give myself a minimum period: Within six months must resign. , in order to motivate myself, I even changed the various account login password to sixmonthsquit. So every landing will remind me.

The idea of lunch pressure

I talked to a lot of my friends about business ideas, and then one day Justin Kan accidentally told me about a friend of his other company who asked me to ask me about a group meal, and see what list of restaurants I used. I was thinking, maybe I could help them? At the time, ordering lunch, you know, in the original trivial work, to help the team to order the meal is the most headache and upset me. But after a year of constant trial and error has accumulated "wealth" is a list of elite restaurants. Soon, I met Justin's friend who gave her a list of restaurants, and she seemed surprisingly relieved. I find that the team can be an opportunity to order the meal. The people in this company gave me the team dinner. They became my first client. So I started to talk to other Office assistants, so I had a second and a third client soon. In the three months since the resignation restrictions, I decided to resign my business.

At first, I remember it was really embarrassing. What I'm doing is "No line of code, just inbox and pile of tables" startups. Finally, I learned from this embarrassment, the salesman first condition is "thick-skinned." If someone mentions their company's food at a party, I will habitually take out my phone and write down their emails. Even when I receive a promotional email from someone else, it will be natural to reply: Do you consider ordering? Can I contact the person who ordered the meal, after listening to my introduction, I am getting my embarrassment and lesson, and the first rule that is no scruple is the sale of a salesman. If someone mentions at a party that their company ordered the food, I put my phone and got their email address right. When I receive mail from salespeople, I flip the script: do their companies think there's food to be delivered? I would like to talk about who made such a decision? If you had listened to my introduction, I would also like to hear your introduction.

Such a display slowly becomes a reflex. When I bought a cell phone, Verizon employees saw my business card asking me what to do and I would naturally tell him what I was doing. "Zerocater is trying to help people make reservations easier, and you just need to tell us how many people there are on the team, whether they're vegetarian or not. We'll take care of everything behind you. "Later, when I got home, I found that Verizon's San Francisco company started registering for Zerocater, providing staff with a meal reservation service during the new IPhone release."

Initial is the hardest, only some customers, even rent is difficult to pay. But a year later, the company began to grow slowly. The forms I used to process the meal schedule went straight up to 500 lines, and the processes began to diverge. The payment process takes 20 hours a week. I started looking for a technical partner. Unfortunately, most of the developers I know are already working in some promising startups.

Of course, I finally persuaded a developer to join my company and we got a YC interview soon. Luckily, Paul Greheum liked the idea. Although we were very nervous, we finally accepted us. At the end of the YC incubation period, an investor wanted to invest in us, but the good news was bad news, and the technical partner wanted to quit the team. Unlike my "1 billion dollar business" with confidence, his passion for the company is not enough.

As a financing technology start-up company, there are two things I do not want, one, do not want to become a single entrepreneur, a person difficult to deal with so much. Second, there is no shortage of technology, and people think that a person with no technical support for ideas is not worth much.